The Kindergarten Early Learning Scale (KELS) was developed as a concise observational assessment for young children. It examines three domains including (1) Math/Science, (2) Social Emotional/Social Studies, and (3) Language and Literacy, with a total of 10 items across the domains. Scores reported for each of the 10 items are based upon…

There is empirical evidence to suggest that oral language and vocabulary on entering kindergarten are the best predictors of later reading success. Identifying skills that are predictive of later achievement using psychometrically sound measurement methods is a necessary component of early intervention efforts. Currently, there are limited methods…

Universal screening of very early school-age children (age 4-7 years) is important for early identification of learning problems that may require enhanced learning opportunity. In this context, use of standardized instruments is critical to obtain valid, reliable, and comparable assessment outcomes. A wide variety of standardized instruments is…

Purpose: In this article, the authors report reliability and validity evidence for the Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skill (DEMSS), a new test that uses dynamic assessment to aid in the differential diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Method: Participants were 81 children between 36 and 79 months of age who were referred to the…

Preschoolers, as a group, are highly attuned to causality, and this attunement is known to facilitate memory, learning, and problem solving. However, recent work reveals substantial individual variability in the strength of children's "causal stance," as demonstrated by their curiosity about and preference for new causal information. In…

Structured input from both teachers and peers maximizes the opportunities for preschoolers to learn grammatical forms. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using a teacher and a peer with typical hearing and language skills to model grammatically correct verbal responses to action "wh-" questions…

Purpose: The present work describes how vocabulary ability as assessed by 3 different forms of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT; Dunn & Dunn, 1997) can be placed on a common latent metric through item response theory (IRT) modeling, by which valid comparisons of ability between samples or over time can then be made. Method: Responses…

Background: The study reported here was an examination of the reliability of a method for determining acquiescent responding and the capacity to respond to items using a Likert scale response format by adults with an intellectual disability. Method: Reliability of the outcomes of these procedures was investigated using a test-retest design.…

Oral language skills are important to consider in school psychology practice, as they are directly tied to many areas of academic functioning. For example, research has demonstrated that oral language skills in early elementary school predict reading comprehension in later grades (Kendeou, van den Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009). With a…

Purpose: Standardized tests are one of the primary assessment tools used by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to diagnose child language impairment. Numerous child language tests are commercially available; however, it is unknown what factors lead clinicians to select particular tests to use in clinical practice. This study investigated whether…

Background & Aims: The present study examined how phonological and lexical knowledge influences memory in children with specific language impairments (SLI). Previous work showed recall advantages for typical adults and children due to word frequency and phonotactic pattern frequency and a recall disadvantage due to phonological similarity…

Strong correlations exist between signed and/or spoken English and the literacy skills of deaf and hard of hearing students. Assessments that are both valid and reliable are key for researchers and practitioners investigating the signed and/or spoken English skills of signing populations. The authors conducted a literature review to explore which…

According to the Simple View of Reading, reading ability can be divided into decoding and language comprehension. In the present study, decoding and comprehension's contribution to reading ability was studied both in children with reading difficulties and in children with typical reading ability. Decoding and comprehension was further divided into…

This study investigated longitudinal pathways leading from early spatial skills in first-grade girls to their fifth-grade analytical math reasoning abilities (N = 138). First-grade assessments included spatial skills, verbal skills, addition/subtraction skills, and frequency of choice of a decomposition or retrieval strategy on the…

The FAIR-FS consists of computer-adaptive reading comprehension and oral language screening tasks that provide measures to track growth over time, as well as a Probability of Literacy Success (PLS) linked to grade-level performance (i.e., the 40th percentile) on the reading comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-10) in the…